Henry A. Wise

Wise was born in Drummondtown in Accomack County, Virginia, to Major John Wise and his second wife Sarah Corbin Cropper; their families had long been settled there. Wise was of English and Scottish descent.[1] He was privately tutored until his twelfth year, when he entered Margaret Academy, near Pungoteague in Accomack County. He graduated from Washington College (now Washington & Jefferson College) in 1825.[2] He was a member of the Union Literary Society at Washington College.[3]

After attending Henry St. George Tucker's Winchester Law School, Wise was admitted to the bar in 1828.[4] He settled in Nashville, Tennessee, in the same year to start a practice, but returned to Accomack County in 1830.

Wise was married three times. He was first married in 1828 to Anne Jennings, the daughter of Rev. Obadiah Jennings and Ann Wilson of Washington, Pennsylvania.[5] In 1837, Anne and one of their children died in a fire, leaving Henry with four children: two sons and two daughters.

Wise married a second time in November 1840, to Sarah Sergeant, the daughter of U.S. Representative John Sergeant (Whig-Pennsylvania) and Margaretta Watmough of Philadelphia. Sarah gave birth to at least five children. She died of complications, along with her last child, soon after its birth on October 14, 1850.[6] Sarah's sister Margaretta married George G. Meade, who was a major general for the Union in the American Civil War.

In the nineteen years of marriage to his first two wives, Wise fathered fourteen children; seven survived to adulthood.[7]

Henry married a third time, to Mary Elizabeth Lyons in 1853.[8] After serving as governor, Wise settled with Mary and his younger children in 1860 at Rolleston, an 884-acre (3.58 km²) plantation which he bought from his brother John Cropper Wise, who also continued to live there.[9] It was located on the Eastern Branch Elizabeth River near Norfolk, Virginia. The property was first owned and developed by William and Susannah Moseley, English immigrants who settled there in 1649. Their descendants owned the property into the 19th century.[10]

After Wise entered Confederate service, he and his family abandoned Rolleston in 1862 as Union troops were taking over Norfolk. Wise arranged for his family to reside in Rocky Mount, Franklin County, Virginia. After the Civil War, Henry and Mary Wise lived in Richmond, where he resumed his law career.

Henry A. Wise served as a U.S. Representative from 1833 to 1844. He was elected Representative in 1832 as a Jackson Democrat. To settle this election, Wise successfully fought a duel with his opponent.[11] Wise was re-elected in 1834, but then broke with the Jackson administration over the rechartering of the Bank of the United States. He became a Whig, but was sustained by his constituents. Wise was re-elected as a Whig in 1836, 1838, and 1840.

While in Congress, Wise was the "faithful" opponent of John Quincy Adams. Adams described Wise in his diary as "loud, vociferous, declamatory, furibund, he raved about the hell-hound of abolition..."[12]

On February 24, 1838, Wise served as the second to William J. Graves of Kentucky during the latter's duel with Jonathan Cilley of Maine at the Bladensburg Dueling Grounds, in which Cilley was mortally wounded.[13][14] He later wrote an account of the event that was published by his son John in the Saturday Evening Post in 1906.[15]

In 1840 Wise was active in securing the nomination and election of John Tyler as Vice President on the Whig ticket. Tyler succeeded to the presidency and then broke with the Whigs. Wise was one of a small group of Congress members, known derisively as the "Corporal's Guard," who supported Tyler during his struggles with the Whigs, and was re-elected as a Tyler Democrat in 1842. Tyler nominated Wise three times as U.S. Minister to France, but the Senate did not confirm the nomination.[16][17]

In 1844, Tyler appointed Wise as U.S. Minister to Brazil. Wise resigned as Representative to take up this office. He served from 1844 to 1847.[4] Two of his children were born in Rio de Janeiro. In Brazil, Wise worked on issues related to trade and tariffs, Brazilian concerns about the US annexation of Texas, and establishing diplomatic relations with Paraguay.[4] (Wise supported the annexation of Texas by the United States. Wise County, Texas, was named in his honor.)

Wise returned to the United States in 1847, and resumed the practice of law. He identified with the Jacksonian Democratic Party, and was active in politics. A delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1850, Wise opposed any reforms, insisting that the protection of slavery came first.[18] In the statewide election of 1855, Wise was elected Governor of Virginia as a Democrat, defeating Know-Nothing candidate Thomas S. Flournoy. He was the 33rd Governor of Virginia, serving from 1856 to 1860, and the last Eastern Shore Governor until Ralph Northam was elected in 2017.[19] Wise County, Virginia, was named after him when it was established in 1856.

Although he was visibly and unapologetically a defender of slavery, he opposed the imposition of the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution on Kansas Territory, as it had not been approved by residents of Kansas: "And why impose this Constitution of a minority on a majority? Cui bono? ["Who would that benefit?"] Does any Southern man imagine that this is a practicable or sufferable way of making a slave State?"[20]

Under the Virginia Constitution, governors cannot serve successive terms, so he was not a candidate for governor in 1860.

Gen. Wise during the American Civil War.

After Virginia declared secession, Wise joined the Confederate States Army (CSA). Because of his political prominence and secessionist reputation, he was commissioned as a brigadier general, despite having no formal military training.[32] He was assigned to the western Virginia region, where it was thought his political support would be helpful. Brigadier General John B. Floyd, another former governor of Virginia, was also sent there. In summer 1861, Wise and Floyd were feuding over who was the superior officer. At the height of the feud General Floyd blamed Wise for the Confederate defeat at the Battle of Carnifex Ferry, stating that Wise refused to come to his aid.[33] The feud was not resolved until Virginia Delegate Mason Mathews, whose son Alexander F. Mathews was Wise's aide-de-camp, spent several days in the camps of both Wise and Floyd. Afterward he wrote to President Jefferson Davis urging that both men be removed.[34][35] Davis subsequently removed Wise from his command in western Virginia.[33]

In early 1862, Wise was assigned to command the District of Roanoke Island, which was threatened by Union sea-borne forces. He fell ill with pleurisy and was not present for the Battle of Roanoke Island, when the island was stormed by the Union. He was blamed for the loss, but for his part complained bitterly about inadequate forces to defend the island.

He commanded a brigade in the division of Maj. Gen. Theophilus H. Holmes on the New Market Road during the Seven Days Battles. For the rest of 1862 and 1863, he held various commands in North Carolina and Virginia.

In 1864 Wise commanded a brigade in the Department of North Carolina & Southern Virginia. His brigade defended Petersburg and was credited with saving the city at the First Battle of Petersburg and to an extent at the Second Battle of Petersburg. Wise commanded a brigade in the Army of Northern Virginia during the final stages of the Siege of Petersburg. He was with Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House, where he fought bravely but urged Lee to surrender. With other Confederate officials, he was taken prisoner after the surrender.

Stating he was "a prisoner on parole", Wise summarized his view of slavery thus:

[T]he chief consolation I have in the result of the war is that slavery is forever abolished, that not only the slaves are in fact, at least freed from bondage, but that I am freed from them. Long before the war indeed, I had definitely made up my mind actively to advocate emancipation throughout the South. I had determined, if I could help it, my descendants should never be subject to the humiliation I have been subject to, by the weakness, if not the wickedness, of slavery; and while I can not recognize as lawful and humane the violent and shocking mode in which it has been abolished, yet I accept the fact most heartily as an accomplished one, and am determined not only to abide by it and acquiesce in it, but to strive by all the means in my power to make it benificent to both races and a blessing especially to our country. I unfeignedly rejoice in the fact, and am reconciled to many of the worst calamities of the war, because I am now convinced that the war was a special providence of God, unavoidable by the nation at either extreme, to tear loose from us a black idol from which we could never have been separated by any other means than those of fire and blood, sword and sacrifice.[36]

Wise (top row, second from right) with Robert E. Lee and Confederate officers, cq1869.

After the war, Wise resumed his law practice in Richmond, and settled there for the rest of his life. In 1865 he tried to reclaim Rolleston, his plantation outside Norfolk, but was turned down by General Grant, considering that he did not make the Ironclad Oath.[37] He was told that he had abandoned that residence when he moved his family to another plantation at Rocky Mount, Virginia. The U.S. commander in Norfolk, Maj. Gen. Terry, appropriated it and other plantations for the Freedmen's Bureau, to establish schools for the newly emancipated slaves and their children. Two hundred freedmen were said to be taking classes at Rolleston.[38] A picture of John Brown had been placed in the parlor. "The officers who confiscated the place found in the house among numerous other papers a plan of secession drawn up by Wise in 1857, and approved by Jeff Davis and several other prominent men In the South."[39] "It is said that ex-Governor Wise chafes a good deal and even foams at the mouth, because his house is used by old John Brown's daughter as a school-house for teaching little niggers."[40] Another report says that Brown's "daughters" were teachers in the school;[41] another says that no daughter was, although one of them was teaching contrabands near Norfolk and visited the mansion.[42]

Wise became a Republican and strong supporter of President Ulysses S. Grant. He did not emphasize his Confederate service, unlike many other politicians, or ever seek a pardon.[43]

Along with working at his law career, Wise wrote a book based on his public service, entitled Seven Decades of the Union (1872).

Wise died in 1876 and was buried at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.

His son Capt. Obediah Jennings Wise[44] died in 1862 under his father's command at Roanoke Island.[45] Another son, Richard, after service in the Confederate army, studied medicine and taught chemistry. He also became a Virginia legislator and US Representative. A third son, John, served in the Confederate army as a VMI cadet; he also later became an attorney and was elected as a US Representative. Both Richard Wise and John Wise were Republicans like their father. Another son, Henry A. Wise, Jr. (1834–1869) entered the ministry and served as an assistant to family friend Rev. Joshua Peterkin at St. James Episcopal Church in Richmond before resigning in 1859, a decade before his death.[46]

Henry A. Wise's grandson Barton Haxall Wise wrote a biography of the former governor entitled The Life of Henry A. Wise of Virginia (New York, 1899).[11] Another grandson, the lawyer and soldier Jennings Cropper Wise (1881–1968, son of John Sergeant Wise), wrote The Early History of the Eastern Shore of Virginia and dedicated it to his grandfather. He used Governor Wise's quote: "I have met the Black Knight with his visor down, and his shield and lance are broken."[47]

Counties were named in his honor in Virginia (Wise County, Virginia) and Texas (Wise County, Texas).

• Wise, Henry A. (1881). Seven decades of the Union. The humanities and materialism, illustrated by a memoir of John Tyler, with reminiscences of some of his great contemporaries. The transition state of this nation – its dangers and their remedy. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.

• List of American Civil War generals (Confederate)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Henry Alexander Wise.

• Bladek, John David. "'Virginia Is Middle Ground': The Know Nothing Party and the Virginia Gubernatorial Election of 1855." Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (1998) 106#1: 35–70 online
• Eaton, Clement. “Henry A. Wise, A Liberal of the Old South.” Journal of Southern History, 7#4 (1941), pp. 482–494. online
• Eaton, Clement. “Henry A. Wise and the Virginia Fire Eaters of 1856.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 21#4 (1935), pp. 495–512. online.
• Eicher, John H., and David J. Eicher, Civil War High Commands. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. ISBN 978-0-8047-3641-1.
• Rice, Otis K. (1986) A History of Greenbrier County. Greenbrier Historical Society, p. 264
• Sifakis, Stewart. Who Was Who in the Civil War. New York: Facts On File, 1988. ISBN 978-0-8160-1055-4.
• Simpson, Craig M., A Good Southerner: A Life of Henry A. Wise of Virginia, Raleigh: University of North Carolina Press, 1985
• Warner, Ezra J. Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959. ISBN 978-0-8071-0823-9.
• Wise, Barton Haxall (1899). The life of Henry A. Wise of Virginia, 1806-1876. New York: Macmillan.
• Wise, Jennings Cropper. Ye Kingdome of Accawmacke: or the Eastern Shore of Virginia in the Seventeen Century (Richmond: The Bell, Book and Stationary Co. 1911)
• Yonge, J. E. Davis. “Henry A. Wise and the Presidency.” Florida Historical Society Quarterly 13#2 (1934), pp. 65–81. online

Wikisource has the text of a 1905 New International Encyclopedia article about "Henry A. Wise".

• Henry A. Wise in Encyclopedia Virginia

• United States Congress. "Henry A. Wise (id: W000649)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Retrieved on 2008-02-13
• "Governor Henry Wise, Ghotes of Virginia
• "A Guide to the Executive Papers of Governor Henry A. Wise, 1856–1859", Library of Virginia
• John Sergeant Wise, The End of an Era, 1899, Documenting the South, University of North Carolina, online text of memoir
• Henry A. Wise at Find a Grave